This weekend my dad challenged me with a question about Twitter. He asked how old the people are who follow a discussion of Shakespeare, with the implicit assumption that it is an older crowd.

So I did what I’ve been doing lately, to demonstrate the value of Twitter – I asked (on Facebook as well).

89 of you wrote back over the weekend, which is a reasonable number to do some statistics.  [ For the record, I *think* that Stanley Wells of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust follows me, but he did not check in with his age.  Knowing his age (it is public record) I know that it would skew my results higher, but I can’t include somebody’s information without their consent, so he’s not included in these findings.  I can’t just pick out one number because I happen to know it, that would skew my random sample. ]

Ready?

With a minimum reported age of 16 and a max of 55, the average age of Shakespeare Geek followers is …. 30 and a half.  *trumpet blare* 

The standard deviation is 10.4.  If I remember my statistics correctly, that means that 68% of the audience falls within plus or minus a standard deviation from the average – so, 2/3rds of you are basically between 20 and 40.

Now let’s have some fun with the Facebook crowd, since I can separate them out.  25 of those 89 results came from Facebook.  Looking specifically at Facebook we have a range of 19 to 48, averaging just shy of 35 (stddev of 9.5, so the range of ages is similar – but a few years older).

So if we take the FB numbers out, that leaves Twitter specifically with a range of 16 – 55 still, but the average age actually drops to 29. 

I find the results interesting, and not just because it suggests that Facebook, once the realm of the college-only crowd, is starting to look a bit old, while Twitter comes up strong from behind.

What this continues to tell us is that Shakespeare remains appealing to a wide array of people.  How often do you get a 16yr old engaged in conversation with a 55yr old?  Not too often!  But obviously something’s got them all coming to this common ground.  I love it.

I know not everybody’s on the east coast of the United States, but I am :).  How’d you spend your hurricane?

Personally I spent it on Twitter tossing out mostly King Lear jokes, with the occasional Tempest thrown in for good measure.  So many Lear comments, in fact, that at one point Sunday afternoon I took a bit of a nap on the couch and had this weird dream where I was some sort of guest speaker for this crowd that had gathered outside, after the hurricane.  I was directed to a podium with a microphone, and had no prepared comments, so I opened with “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!”  Of course even in my dream I can never remember the next line (I always want to say “spitfires and hurricanoes”), so that’s all I’ve got.

For the obligatory “Replace a word in the title with Irene” game on Twitter we had A Midsummer Night’s Irene, Much Ado About Irene, Irene’s Labour’s Lost, and Twelfth Hurricane, or, What Irene Will.

Then came a wide variety of stuff, some of which I think will make good t-shirt material 🙂 …

I Survived Hurricane Irene and all I got was a drunken butler, a jester,
and a fishy smelling mooncalf who tried to steal my laundry.

NC police report multiple complaints of an elderly gentleman claiming to
have caused the hurricane, to seek revenge on his enemies.

 During the storm, keep an eye out for a rambling naked fellow and his fool. He’s had a bad day, give him a cup of tea.

Oh, and lastly, for your entertainment, I found this interesting collection of three separate interpretations of the “storm scene” from Lear. It’s called “Choices”, and whoever made it has overlaid some text on each version – why did this guy swing his hands like that? why did this one choose to emphasize a certain word, or pause in a certain way?  It’s all questions, there’s no real analysis, but it’s still interesting.

I saw a discussion the other day where somebody argued that Shakespeare was these three things – actor, poet, playwright – specifically in that order. In other words he was an actor first, a poet second, a playwright last.  I don’t think he meant chronologically, either.

I disagree.  I think that while he may have gotten involved in the theatre as an actor, he certainly found himself as a poet shortly after and then spent the rest of his career putting poetry on the stage.  Nobody ever speaks of Shakespeare’s name among the great actors of his generation.  He was no Burbage or Kempe.  He acted, sure, and he started out as an actor. But I don’t think it’s accurate to say that he was primarily an actor.

Thoughts? This is another spin on the old, “Did Shakespeare really know he was that good, or was he just doing whatever it took to pay the bills?” argument.  Discuss.

Ok, people, we need some Shakespeare knock knock jokes.  After all, the man invented the form, right?  Fill in your own Hamlet or Macbeth reference, your choice :).

Feel free to make one up on the spot, that’s what I spend most of my time on Twitter doing.

“Knock, knock.”
Who’s there?
“Earl of Oxford.
Earl of Oxford who?
“Precisely.”

That’s my only real entry thus far that meets the appropriate form (i.e. you could actually tell it to somebody who plays their part correctly).  Others, that do not fit the form:

“Knock, knock.”
Who’s th….oh, hi Lavinia.  Doesn’t it hurt your head to do that?

“Knock, knock.”
…
“Knock, knock.”
…
“Knock, knock.”
Darnit didn’t we hire a Porter who’s supposed to get that? Has he been drinking again?

What else ya got?

At least, that’s our story of the morning. 

“Academics have wondered for years why music is quite so central to
the play,” said Holmes. “I have always felt that it reads like there is
something missing. There are gaps in the text and character development
is cut short. It has a reputation as an underwritten play, although it
seems clear that extra text has not been cut or lost.”
Holmes
points to unexplained musical references in every scene and his theory
has been supported by the distinguished Shakespearean Stanley Wells. “I
would want to see the evidence, but this sounds possible. I can quite
believe The Tempest might have been conceived as a musical
entertainment,” said Wells, who has edited Shakespeare texts for Oxford
University Press and chairs the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

Why not? They’re right, there’s an awful lot of music references in the play (Caliban’s “Be not afeard…” speech being a particularly powerful example).
Last year (or whenever it was), Julie Taymor put an awful lot of music into her Tempest film – including lifting the “Journeys end in lovers meeting” song from Twelfth Night.

Speaking of Twelfth Night, what other Shakespeare plays would make good musicals?